We’re back.
We had a great two weeks down in wonderland… Black Rock City, NV. The setup was fairly easy with the light and sturdy Stacia structure borrowed from Flight To Mars. Our sealed box calibrated fairly quickly. The most work was done in creating start-up scripts ensuring that any power-up resulted in a working installation, improving the audio interpretations for the main interaction set, and getting the laser feedback working!!!
We saw some great emergent behavior, which was a goal. It was lovely to watch people begin to interact and discover what control that had over the space. Often several people would create mostly noise, and eventually (at about 20 people) inevitable cooperation to move from noise to group control.
We saw games of Simon says, strangers spinning around holding hands –in twos as well as 12s, groups created one tracking shape and altering size, etc.
Most of the time our MaxMPS only set was controlling the audio, as it allowed for a 2-axis coordinate-based audio interaction rather than just a subdivided field. This gave more finite control of the sound and was less prone to becoming annoying over time. Our sets using audio clips got several hours of play time each. In the future, we’ll learn how to marry these two, as we’ll have to step outside the whining noise box.
With just one or two people, Steve did seem like an infant following people’s motion and cooing along with their movement. In this regard it was absolutely imperative that the laser tracking show feedback to let people know they were the source for energizing Steve.
One unexpected treat was kicking dust and watching the laser track it through the space along with the whirring “dust chime” effect.
The installation was a success in our minds, and was a pleasure to watch.
